Feeling Wobbly? Remembering the International Workers of the World

The International Workers of the World (IWW) was – shall I say? – a singular labor movement.

Founded in Chicago during 1905, its glory years ran up to about 1920. Members were known informally as Wobblies. Luminaries of the day such as Big Bill Haywood, Eugene Debs, Mother Jones, Lucy Parsons, and Daniel DeLeon were among its founders.

“One of the IWW's most important contributions to the labor movement and broader push towards social justice was that, when founded, it was the only American union to welcome all workers, including women, immigrants, African Americans and Asians, into the same organization.” (1)

“The IWW was an ‘industrial’ union, one that embraced and organized both skilled and unskilled workers within particular industries. ...(I)t was a democratic union with a mix of radical anti-capitalist politics.” (2)

“But the IWW's revolutionary program and class-war rhetoric yielded more enemies than allies. Frequently harassed, jailed, or beaten when they tried to organize, the Wobblies faced something far more serious after the United States mobilized for war in 1917. Over the next several years, federal and state governments moved to suppress the organization, imprisoning hundreds of Wobblies, passing criminal syndicalism laws that made membership a crime.” (3)

The extent of today’s economic globalism surely is far beyond anything that the IWW’s founders could have imagined. One might think that the very concept – international workers of the world – is, for labor, more prescient and pertinent than ever.

Ah, one more thing. The embers of the organization still glow. Visit www.IWW.org for more.

Sources:

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_World

(2) https://www.historylink.org/File/2016

(3) https://depts.washington.edu/iww/

Background:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goldman-industrial-workers-world/

https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1050.html